Suicide à la Kodak: Bill Thomas in X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly

Bill Thomas, “Rats and Syringes,” gelatin silver print, 1992

Last Fall, X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly out of Los Angeles invited me to contribute to its column, “One Image One Minute.” I was free to select any image I wanted, and to hold forth on said picture for 150 words—the rough equivalent of 60 seconds of speech. I knew immediately that I wanted to write about Bill Thomas’ fantastic suicide photograph from 1992, “Rats and Syringes.” What I hadn’t counted on was how quickly 150 words would fly by. I crammed as much as I could into those 150 words, and even worked in a Peanuts allusion for good measure.

X-TRA is available at Barnes & Noble, as well as plenty of bookstores across the country. Check out my piece online, and hunt down a hard copy in support of artist-run journals. Thanks again to Micol Hebron for inviting me to participate in “One Minute…”

(Sadly, Bill Thomas has virtually zero online presence except for an old, old gallery at Zonezero that is of such low quality that it’s not worth linking to. I’ve been in talks with a really fine publication about doing a longer piece about Thomas’ suicide photographs this fall, in hopes of reintroducing these amazing works. Keep your fingers crossed.)

[Edit: Evidently the Utne Reader enjoys “One Image One Minute,” as well as my “straight-forwardly analytical” style.]